Getting Ready for Ecuador

I'm in the process of packing, checking my passport, deciding what I need to take, letting friends and family know my plans, and all the other things that involved in taking a major international trip to a new destination.

I will leave Thursday for a three-week trip to Ecuador. It's very exciting.

But mixed in with all the trip preparations, I'm also feeling the need to do some work as a student. Today I prepared the Informed Consent Forms for participants in my thesis. I will start collecting data soon after I return, so having that piece of paper prepared puts me just that much closer to data collection.

The other thing I need to do is prepare as much as I can for my computer class. Since Caitlin (my Goddaughter/travel companion) has developed a very fully itinerary for us that will probably leave me without access to a computer for the next two weeks, I figure it will be good to do a little work before I go. I've been on D2L and have saved some work onto a flashdrive. I thought if I don't have internet access but have computer access I can at least do some reading. I'm also going to print out some helpful articles that I can read on my travel day, which will be quite long. (I leave here at 4:30 am and arrive in Quito at 10:00 pm.). I have a PDA that I'm going to try to use as well. After writing a little more here, I'm going to see if I can download some of the articles onto it. In the past I haven't been very successful download files, but maybe tonight will be different.

I've never had a blog, nor have I ever thought I would have a blog, so this is an interesting venture. I'm not really crazy about being public. I joined facebook a couple months ago because a friend of mine thought it would be fun. I actually have 4 or 5 friends there. I've had three more requests, but haven't accepted. Like I said, I don't like the idea of a lot of people being able to have access to my information.

I also have a webpage, or I should say my husband and I have a webpage. He set it up and he keeps it. He has shown me a couple times how to upload things to it, but I haven't tried. I also took a workshop a few years ago on Dreamweaver and have a webpage of my own that I created in the workshop. I never did much with it. I think it will be good for me to have to do that work again. It's something that I can and probably will use as a teacher so I need to get more familiar with it.

As I write all those things--having a PDA, a webpage, a being on facebook--it could sound like I'm pretty tech savy. However, don't be fooled. I feel very un-tech savy. I do use my computer all the time, but mainly for e-mail and internet searching (which I don't even do that very much). I love e-mail. I'd rather use e-mail than the telephone or snail mail. I'm on it all the time.

I'll be a lot more savy after this class. I'm excited about that. I'm ready to learn more about using technology and to start getting better connected with the "net generation."